How to Skim the Cream Off Your Milk!

[Music] everybody is karellen homesteading family and today I'm going to show you how to scam with the cream off of your home raised milk now when you have a cow the milk will rise right to the top of the jar after some amount of time of sitting so this milk was milked yesterday and you may be able to see the cream line right here it's a little hard to tell on the video but I can see that there is a line of cream starting right here and up and below that there is kind of a lighter white colored milk and this is all of my cream sitting at the top now this milk is coming from a Jersey cow and they are noted for having quite a bit of cream sometimes the jar will be filled at least a third of the way with cream and other times it's less just depending on where it's come from the bucket and what part of the milking has come out of and you know when you're working with a goat you will still get a little bit of cream rise but because goat's milk is naturally homogenized a lot of times if you want cream from your goat in any great quantity you really need to get a separator now we like to do things kind of the old-fashioned way here so I like to just skim my cream off I only take the thickest cream right off the top for making butter because I like my family to be able to drink that really good butter fat in their milk also and luckily with a Jersey cow a lot of times we're getting close to 8 percent butterfat rather than what they call whole milk at the grocery store which is closer to three and a half three and a half or four percent butterfat and so you know I can take the thick stuff off and still leave more good healthy grass-fed fat on this milk than what you'd be getting from the grocery store so you know skimming your milk is very easy it gets thicker the longer it sits so so I usually will skin my milk in the morning every morning and I skim all of the previous day's milk the milk that came out of the cow yesterday morning almost 24 hours ago we'll have a really nice thick layer on the top and if you wait and let that milk sit for almost 48 hours it will almost turn into butter all by itself on top of that milk it gets really thick and solid it's almost a solid layer absolutely delicious with strawberries when it's thick like that but because I need to do it every day to keep my refrigerator in feed and moving and I can make things with the milk I will do the 24 hour old milk and the evening milking which is about 12 hour old milk and I'll just take the thickest stuff off of the top usually there's a couple of different grades of cream when you talk about it you've got that really thick heavy cream and you know what I'm talking about heavy cream about 48 hours you can not find in the grocery store here in the United States it does not exist the only place that I have seen that is in a restaurant in the switz out so you just can't get that here what we know as heavy cream is you know kind of the equivalent of that 24 hour old milk being skimmed and having that pretty decently thick layer and then what we're often buying at the grocery store is something like half and half where you know you've got your your little bit of cream and a little bit of your real light cream so depending on what you use it for you can either separate out the different levels of cream but you know it's all great and butter is all great and ice cream and it's all great in coffee or anything else you want to use it in and it all turns into a really good whipped cream too so I just keep it all together now what I have here is a gravy ladle and this is what I have found to be the absolute best thing for skimming the cream off my milk it's just a small Lindell you can get these online you can get these from your thrift store I got these years ago from a thrift store for five cents I think and then I always use a separate spoon and what I just found is that if you wet both of these with just good pure water before you start it helps that cream not stick to the spoon and slide right off a lot easier now I've gotta warn you I always make a mess when I do this you see this towel it is a conveniently placed and I've got my wash rags close by so I can clean up after myself but all I do is just scoop down and pull off the sick top layer then I'm going to put it into a clean jar remember when you're dealing with something like dairy cleanliness is very important but you don't need to go crazy and go as far as being sterile that's just not that important cleanliness a nice clean jar is going to be just fine for your home use purposes and so you know the big trick here is to get the cream without getting too much milk well how do you know when you're getting the milk and when you get down to the milk there will be a noticeable difference in color the milk itself is a much thinner and bluer color than the cream and all you're doing here is taking off however much you want now this is pretty thin right here because it's actually already skin this one this morning I'm just showing you with the cream that I left on this will still just this thin cream will still turn into butter maybe not as high a percentage as butter as if I have the really hit cream and it'll still be delicious and other baked goods Oh clotted cream oh my goodness there are so many delicious things you can make with cream and you know when you have your own milk cow or when you're buying it from somebody locally and you can get the raw grass-fed milk cream a health-food it's not a junk food anymore you don't have to be afraid of it for your health it's so good okay so I am getting down swear I'm starting to get little swirls of blue into my spoon and that's why I want to be careful about not picking up too much milk because that milk will cause that cream to go sour more quickly I make butter once to twice a week depending on how much cream I'm collecting right now it's twice a week because I'm often getting about five gallons of cream in a week and that translates into Oh fifteen pounds of butter about right now for me and which is a nice amount I can stash it in the freezer and so this is about all I want to take because I'm starting to get a little bit too blue in there and you just don't want to get too much of that milk in there and that if easy as it is to skim the cream off of your milk there's really nothing tricky about it all you're doing is literally what it says and just skimming the cream right off the top now I will come back tomorrow and add more and more cream to this until this is full and just keep this in the refrigerator until I'm ready to use it and you know what fourth of July is right around the corner and we have a tradition of homemade ice cream sandwiches which starts with homemade ice cream which starts before that with home skin cream and so I have a feeling that this is going to be used up in ice cream in the next few days in preparation for fourth of July so have a great day you guys and enjoy some healthy delicious homemade cream for more videos like these sign up at WWF it we calm also follow along on Facebook Instagram and YouTube [Music]

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 78,927

Keywords: homesteading, homestead, raw milk, fresh milk, jersey cow, milk cow, cream, skim cream, skim your milk, how to skim the cream, how to skim the cream from your milk

Id: DuqcScwATzE

Length: 8min 53sec (533 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2017